Different types of mining and construction machines, such as tractors, bulldozers, backhoes, excavators, motor graders, and mining trucks commonly employ earth-working blades to move and level earth or materials being excavated or loaded. The earth-working blades frequently experience extreme wear from repeated contact with highly abrasive materials encountered during operation. Replacement of the earth-working blades and other implements used in mining and construction machinery can be costly and labor intensive.
The earth-working blades can be equipped with a ground engaging tool (GET), such as a cutting-bit, a set of cutting-bits or other wear members, to help protect the blade and other earth-working tools from wear. Typically, a wear member can be in the form of teeth, edge protectors, tips, or other removable components that can be attached to the areas of the blade or other tool where most damaging and repeated abrasions and impacts occur. For example, a GET in the form of edge protectors can wrap around an implement's cutting edge to help protect it from excessive wear.
In such applications, the removable wear members can be subjected to wear from abrasion and repeated impact, while helping to protect the blade or other implement to which they can be mounted. When the wear member becomes worn through use, it can be removed and replaced with a new wear member or other GET at a reasonable cost to permit the continued use of the implement. By protecting the implement with a GET and replacing the worn GET at appropriate intervals, significant cost and time savings are possible.
The cost and time savings available from using a wear member to protect large machine implements can be further enhanced by increasing the ability of the wear member to cut through the working material and by increasing the useful life of the wear member itself without significantly increasing the material needed to make the wear member. Currently known wear members, particularly wear members constructed using standard construction such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), can encounter efficiency problems. One problem encountered with some wear members constructed by ISO standards is a “ski effect,” in which a newly mounted wear member will simply skim across the top of a work surface until enough of the wear member has worn away to effect proper work surface penetration. There is an ongoing need in the art for improved wear member systems that increase wear efficiency and cutting effectiveness, thus increasing the efficiency of earth-working machinery and increasing overall work productivity.
It will be appreciated that this background description has been created by the inventors to aid the reader, and is not to be taken as an indication that any of the indicated problems were themselves appreciated in the art. While the described principles can, in some respects and embodiments, alleviate the problems inherent in other systems, it will be appreciated that the scope of the protected innovation is defined by the attached claims, and not by the ability of any disclosed feature to solve any specific problem noted herein.